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<blockquote data-quote="CrazyMage" data-source="post: 699343" data-attributes="member: 565">Good comments, FraserRonald.&nbsp; Don't forget Aramaic in its day (for many centuries the lingua franca of the ancient near east) and Greek, after Alexander the Great spread his empire to Egypt and India.&nbsp; For alternate rules on speaking other languages, check out Dungeon #97, the V for Victory mini-game.&nbsp; There they use a 5 rank scale for ability in languages.&nbsp; One rank will get you a few phrases; 5 ranks has you speaking like a native.&nbsp; Another interesting and related topic is the spell comprehend languages .&nbsp; The text says it gives you &quot;the literal meaning&quot;.&nbsp; And this, my friends, gives a DM room for fun.&nbsp; There are some advantages for knowing a languages vs. just having a translation.A language does not need to have one word that corresponds exactly to &quot;east&quot; or &quot;west&quot;.&nbsp; An obvious substitution is &quot;sun rising, sun setting.&quot;&nbsp; But maybe the direction is &quot;to the mountain&quot;, but there are a number of mountains around.&nbsp; Which one is it?&nbsp; Native speakers know.&nbsp; People trained in the language probably know.&nbsp; Those using spells...don't, unless they have extra info.The PCs find a treasure map with writing in an unknown language on it.&nbsp; They cast their spell, find out they need to go 200 paces north and off they go.&nbsp; Ooops.&nbsp; This was written by halfings; their paces are a BIT shorter than human.&nbsp; If they knew the writing, they would have recognized that it was halfling; but the spell doesn't tell you that.There are a number of ways (terms for distances, direction, idioms) where having a literal translation does little good.&nbsp; I'm thinking of coming up with some more like this and getting it printed somewhere, but we'll see.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CrazyMage, post: 699343, member: 565"] Good comments, FraserRonald. Don't forget Aramaic in its day (for many centuries the lingua franca of the ancient near east) and Greek, after Alexander the Great spread his empire to Egypt and India. For alternate rules on speaking other languages, check out Dungeon #97, the V for Victory mini-game. There they use a 5 rank scale for ability in languages. One rank will get you a few phrases; 5 ranks has you speaking like a native. Another interesting and related topic is the spell [I]comprehend languages[/I] . The text says it gives you "the literal meaning". And this, my friends, gives a DM room for fun. There are some advantages for knowing a languages vs. just having a translation. A language does not need to have one word that corresponds exactly to "east" or "west". An obvious substitution is "sun rising, sun setting." But maybe the direction is "to the mountain", but there are a number of mountains around. Which one is it? Native speakers know. People trained in the language probably know. Those using spells...don't, unless they have extra info. The PCs find a treasure map with writing in an unknown language on it. They cast their spell, find out they need to go 200 paces north and off they go. Ooops. This was written by halfings; their paces are a BIT shorter than human. If they knew the writing, they would have recognized that it was halfling; but the spell doesn't tell you that. There are a number of ways (terms for distances, direction, idioms) where having a literal translation does little good. I'm thinking of coming up with some more like this and getting it printed somewhere, but we'll see. [/QUOTE]

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